Your Battle Scars
by Gamma Orionis
Summary: Marietta found it difficult to look at Cho these days. All Marietta could do for hours on end was sit in her dormitory, or - when it was deserted - the Ravenclaw common room and stare at herself in a mirror, reading over and over the word that had been branded on her face. Written for bluemermaid for hp-beholder.


**Title:** Your Battle Scars  
**Rating:** PG  
**Pairings:** Marietta/Cho  
**Word Count:** 2 150  
**Author's/Artist's Notes:** Written for the hp_beholder fest, where my recipient was bluemermaid.

)O(

Marietta found it difficult to look at Cho these days.

All Marietta could do for hours on end was sit in her dormitory, or - when it was deserted - the Ravenclaw common room and stare at herself in a mirror, reading over and over the word that had been branded on her face.

_Sneak_.

She didn't want to inflict her presence on anyone else. She didn't want to inflict her appearance on anyone else. She didn't want anyone else to have to look at her and see the word on her face, and wonder what she had done - or worse, not even wonder, just recoil in repulsion.

Cho didn't recoil, but Marietta avoided her anyway. Cho was too beautiful for Marietta to want to mar her existence with a monstrosity like her face, her face now marked with an insult that stung her so deeply that she couldn't even cry for it. And when Cho insisted on sitting with Marietta – even going so far as to skip classes for her sake – it just made Marietta feel like a burden.

"You should go," she told her, as the two girls sat in the empty common room. Marietta wasn't looking at Cho, and she doubted that Cho was looking at her. _Why would she?_

"No, I shouldn't," Cho said firmly. "You need me more than Professor McGonagall does."

"It's not like you can do anything," Marietta sniffed. She had to bite down on her tongue so as not to start sobbing when Cho reached over and put her hand on her cheek. She had been crying on and off for days – more than Cho had_ever_ cried, and that somehow made it even worse, because it reminded Marietta how much weaker and sillier she was than Cho.

"It's going to be okay," she soothed, smoothing her hand over her blotchy, swollen cheek. "Madame Pomfrey will know what to do."

"Don't say things like that when you know they're not true," Marietta sniffed. She raised her hand to push Cho's away. "That Hermione Granger did this- and I know what sort of witch she is- I'm going to look like this for the rest of my life!"

"No, you're not," Cho said, though she sounded a little doubtful. "Look, I'll talk to Harry, and he can talk to Hermione and he'll get her to take the curse off."

"Fat chance," she sniffed. "Potter hates me."

"No, he doesn't."

"Of course he does!" Marietta turned away from her, tears stinging her eyes. "He hates me for telling Umbridge about the DA – but I had to, Cho, I had to!"

"I know, I know…" Cho's voice was quiet and soothing and she rested her hand over Marietta's, drawing tiny circles on the outside of her wrist with the tip of her thumb. "Look, they'll figure something out, I promise. _We'll_ figure something out."

"You can't promise that, Cho. Don't be stupid," Marietta snapped at her. Cho's brows drew together and she moved back a little, obviously hurt.

"Sorry," she said quietly. Marietta winced at the sight of tears beginning to fill her friend's eyes, and she reached up to wipe them away for her. Cho closed her eyes as she did, and didn't pull away from her touch, for which Marietta was devoutly grateful. She didn't think she could have handled rejection from her best friend at this point, even if she deserved it.

"It's really not that bad," Cho said, after she had gathered herself. She smiled at Marietta, a wavering, watery smile, but a smile nonetheless. "I mean, it's nothing that a bit of makeup won't be able to cover up."

"And what am I supposed to do then?" Marietta asked tiredly. She ran her hand through her hair. "Am I just supposed to spend the rest of my life wearing makeup half an inch thick? How am I ever going to find the time to put that on every day? And it's not going to stay. I'll have to spend half my life in the lavatory, touching it up. I'll go crazy."

"No… Marietta, it won't be that bad - just a little foundation in the mornings, and some powder over it - you'll get so quick that you can do it in five minutes–"

"And what if I don't want to?" she interrupted. Cho looked surprised.

"Well... I suppose if you don't want to- but I thought you did want to... I thought you were worried about what people would think..."

"I am," Marietta said. She touched her cheek, wincing at the feeling of the bumps beneath her fingers. "But I don't want to spend the _whole_ rest of my life with makeup on. I- I want some people to be able to see my real face, not one that I have to paint on myself every day..."

"I know it's hard, Marietta, but–"

"But what?" She stood up and started pacing the common room, so she didn't have to look at Cho. Cho was so beautiful, how could she ever understand what Marietta was thinking or feeling? Cho had never had to fake her appearance to look pretty to other people.

"You're beautiful, Marietta," Cho told her quietly, and Marietta wiped her eyes and looked down at her again, her lips wobbling.

"No, I'm not. I never was. And I'm sure as _Hell_ not now."

Cho stood up and put her arms gently around Marietta's shoulders, and before Marietta even knew what was happening, she was sinking into her friend's embrace. Cho held her close, rocking her gently back and forth like she was comforting a child, and all she could think was that Cho was the prettiest girl she'd ever met in her life and it was_so_ unfair that she could look so beautiful and that Marietta couldn't…

"Just because you've got a few spots, doesn't stop you from being beautiful," Cho whispered in her ear and Marietta straightened and looked her right in her eyes. She had to bite down on her lower lip to stop herself from crying out from sheer frustration.

How could Cho look at her with those lovely, sweet dark eyes, set in that _perfect_ face that had never had so much as a single mark, framed with that smooth hair that never tangled, and say with those perfectly shaped lips that Marietta was beautiful - had _ever_ been beautiful?

"I know what you're thinking," Cho said, and Marietta thought that she detected a little bitterness in her friend's voice. "You're thinking that I couldn't possibly understand what it's like."

"You couldn't."

"No, I couldn't."

She had expected Cho to deny it, and pull out some example of a time that she had felt anything less than beautiful that would only prove how little she understood about it. But Cho was shaking her head, looking straight at her, and her face was inscrutable.

"I don't know what it's like to be you. I don't know what it's like to have some- some _awful_ person put a hex on you that you don't know if you'll ever be able to fix. I wouldn't pretend I do know that, Marietta - you know me better."

"So, then..."

"What I do know," Cho interrupted, and her voice was beginning to rise and waver. Marietta could tell that she was holding back tears as best she could, but she knew her well enough to know that it was only a matter of time before she lost control and started to cry. "What I do know is what you look like. I'm the one looking at you, all right? You can see yourself in a mirror, but it's not the same, because all you can think of is what you feel like inside. I can look at you and tell you exactly what you look like from the outside. And you know what, Marietta? You know what?"

"What?" Marietta whispered. Her throat was beginning to choke too, and not with the same tears of anguish and fury that had filled her since she had laid eyes on herself in the mirror after the curse took effect.

"You look absolutely beautiful," Cho told her. She spoke with a conviction that Marietta hadn't thought that Cho had in her - at least, not anymore, not in these months where Cho always seemed so tired and wavering. "You're beautiful, and I think- I think..." She broke off briefly and took a deep breath before continuing. "I think having that on your face just proves that you're a better person than Hermione Granger."

"I'm not, though," Marietta said quietly. "It's written right here on my face, isn't it? I'm just a _sneak_." She spat the word out as if it tasted bad, and it almost did - she didn't think she would ever be able to think of the word _sneak_ in the same way again. It had become the worst sort of profanity to her.

"According to Hermione Granger," Cho reminded her. "That doesn't mean that's really what you are, it just means that that's what she thinks... and I think it's pretty rich of her to call you a sneak when she put a curse like this on you!"

"Yeah, well, you're probably the only one who thinks that."

"But I'm right." Cho spoke with a certainty that only she could have - a certainty that was whole-hearted, without the faintest shred of doubt or fabrication around the edges. "She's the sneak, not you. You did what you thought was right - I don't know whether it was the right thing to do, Marietta, I don't." She bit her lip, then continued. "But you thought it was right, and that means that you would have been doing the wrong thing if you'd just stayed quiet and done what Hermione Granger wanted you to."

Marietta raised her hand to her mouth, biting at her nails, then quickly dropped her hand. She couldn't afford to make herself any uglier by chewing her nails off.

"Stop that, Marietta!" Cho commanded, as if she had heard her thoughts. It was both a benefit and a curse of having such a close friend - their minds were so thoroughly tied together, and they knew so much about each others' quirks and habits that it was impossible to hide one's thoughts.

"Stop what?" she asked tiredly.

"Thinking that you're ugly. I've had enough of it." And now Cho just sounded impatient. She put both her hands on Marietta's cheeks - not wincing in disgust when her fingers ran across the welts, Marietta noticed - and held her head in place, then leaned forward slowly so that their foreheads were touching. Marietta was looking so closely into her best friend's eyes that they seemed to melt into one, and it was as if there was nothing else in the world except the two of them.

"I think you're the most beautiful girl in the world," Cho said quietly, punctuating every word with a gentle tightening of her fingers on the sides of Marietta's face. "And I think these..." She ran her fingers over the K of _sneak_, "make you look even more beautiful. They're battle scars, Marietta."

"Battle scars..."

"You were fighting for what you thought was right," Cho said. "_Doing_ what you thought was right. And you were punished for it, but that just means that you had even more reason to do what you did - because what kind of people would we have been if we kept on fighting for Harry's side, when they do things like this?"

Cho's eyes were beginning to slide in and out of focus as Marietta's own filled with tears. She blinked them away, trying to keep looking straight ahead, straight at her best friend, not breaking eye contact.

"Cho?"

"Yes?"

"Do you really think that's what they are? Battle scars? Or are you just saying that because you're my friend?"

"I do think that's what they are," Cho said, her voice both soft and steady. "_And_ I'm saying it because I'm your friend. And I would be as good as lying if I let you keep on believing that you're not beautiful."

"You really think that?"

"Of course I do," Cho whispered.

Then she kissed Marietta.

It was a warm, firm kiss, not particularly passionate, but comforting. And comfort was what Marietta needed then. She was sure that her heart was actually swelling in her chest, and a rush of love ran through her - love for Cho, who didn't need to be here, kissing her, but who _was_, and who spoke with such confidence when she said that she thought she was beautiful, in spite of what was on her face.

Or, if Cho was being honest when she said that they were battle scars, maybe even _because_ of what was on her face.

)O(

_Fin_


End file.
